I'm watching a Nova/National Geographic special on Machu Picchu. It's pretty interesting. When you realize that the entire city was built without the wheel and without iron. The Inca were had one of the largest empires in the world pretty amazing huh. It's pretty wild when you think about, they only ruled as an empire for one hundred years. An empire destroyed by disease, civil war, and finally by the Spanish. The city itself was discovered in 1912. Even more amazing to me is that the original Incan roads are still in existence. The story of it's discovery was published in National Geographic's April 1913 magazine. One researcher is guessing that it took 50 years to build the city. First king of the Incan empire is said to have ordered it's building. Machu Picchu is built on a mountain that has two fault lines nearby it, and it also receives torrential rains around 76 inches of rain per year. They actually engineered the mountain to make it stronger. They even engineered the terraces so that the rainwater would be absorbed into the ground and not cause mudslides. They situated drains which held water and then created a way to drain the water away from the water. Machu Picchu is built to last. The city has 16 fountains and they each provide drinking water. They are feed by a natural spring that originates from the mountain. Their delivery system allowed drinking water to be supplied for a population of 1,000 people. They worked with granite taken directly from mountain itself. It is also known that the Incans performed child sacrifices.
I am always in awe at the ancient civilizations of the world. They each have done things that would we can't comprehend. Wonders of the world like the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, and Machu Picchu are wonders that we in the modern age find it hard to imagine the builders who built them. It boggles my mind how smart to see things like the Incan's strengthening the mountain built on Machu Picchu and how this people not only built this place, but used this place. Their religions, their daily lives, and their artifacts amaze me. One thing that does leave me wondering, would the Incan Empire still exist if it were not for the Spanish invaders?
This is what I watched tonight, what did you watch?
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